1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to technology that discriminates sound captured by a sound capturing device (hereinafter referred to as “input sound”) according to acoustic properties of the input sound.
2. Technical Background
Technology for discriminating whether an input sound is one of a male voice and a female voice has been proposed hitherto. For example, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. S60-129795 discloses technology for determining whether an input sound is one of a male voice or a female voice according to a result of a comparison of a distance between the input sound and a male voice standard pattern and a distance between the input sound and a female voice standard pattern.
However, actual input sounds include incidental sounds other than a human voice (hereinafter referred to as “non-human-voice sound”) such as environmental sounds incident during sound capturing. Therefore, it is difficult to discriminate with high accuracy between a male voice and a female voice only by simply comparing the input sound and by simply comparing the captured input sound with each of the male voice standard pattern and the female voice pattern.